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Workforce Planning Model: Benefits Of Diverse Teams

Guest Blogger, Lina Poka: “Lina built a very successful marketing career in Toronto, Canada before moving to Edinburgh and holds a BBA & an MBA from the prestigious Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, Canada; and for the past six years Lina has run her own marketing consulting company. Lina’s career has enabled her to manage teams of up to 50 people, build numerous websites and apps with millions of visitors & downloads, work on a project for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, broker deals with huge American & Canadian retailers and receive numerous international marketing awards.”

Diverse teams promote innovation:

According to a 2013 report by Deloitte when employees ‘think their organisation is committed to and supportive of diversity, and the employees feel included’, their ability to innovate increases by an astounding 83%. More innovative companies enjoy some very practical benefits including improved productivity, reduced costs, increased competitiveness and improved brand recognition.

Diverse teams perform better:

Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their respective national industry medians. Unfortunately, several studies have shown that curriculum vitaes that are submitted by potential employees without white sounding names are not as likely to get interviewed for the job.

Diverse companies generate higher increased revenue and profit:

According to the The American Sociological Review, companies that have a more ethnically diverse workforce planning model enjoy ‘15 times more sales revenue than companies with lowest levels of diversity’. In other words, companies that are more diverse are more profitable.

Diverse teams have more customers:

Moreover, according to the same study mentioned above ‘companies with the highest rates of racial diversity reported an average of 35,000 customers compared to 22,700 average customers among those companies with the lowest rates of racial diversity’.

Moreover, gender diverse teams enjoy even more customers:

Sociologist Cedric Herring analyzed data from the National Organizations Survey and concluded that ‘Companies with the highest levels of gender diversity reported an average of 15,000 more customers than organizations with the lowest levels of gender diversity. He also found that the smallest incremental increase in levels of racial or gender diversity resulted in more than 400 and 200 additional customers, respectively’.

Overall, diverse teams are more innovative and they perform better in the workplace generating increased revenue, ROI, more clients.